omnipotence

• Whitehead and Hartshorne: not a perfect level of omnipotence but the highest that can be reached, people cannot resist God

  • absolute omnipotence or possessing total power is not a perfect quality
  • rather, God's power is unsurpassable - God is unsurpassably great
• Hartshorne: God's omnipotence should be about total influence and the effects against resistance

  through our free will we can resist against God

  this doesn't mean that he is not omnipotent as He can still overcome this resistance

  rose example

  • when cutting a rose branch, the branch resists the clippers, but ultimately, the resistance is stronger, leading to the branch being cut
  • if the clippers were omnipotent then the rose would not resist - clipping would be easy

  it is not impressive to conquer things that put up no resistance - it is better to be overcome the resistance
• Aquinas: God can do anything that is logically possible and does not contradict his nature (couldn't be evil)

  • if something is logically contradictory then it is not a thing in itself - eg a square circle does not exist - and therefore can't be made even by God (because it is not even a thing to be created)
  • God is incorpreal - has no body - therefore he cannot get tired
  • God is perfectly good - he cannot deceive or commit evil
• Vardy : God limits his own power so humans can have genuine free will when He came on earth as Jesus (kenosis)

  • God is not in control of all history and things do not always happen in accordance to his will
  • God is limited by the universe - fine-tuned for free and rational humans
  • his limitation is self-imposed - but is still OP because no one limits his power, only He himself does
• Macquarrie: God limits his power due to his love for humanity

  • God wants us to be free
  • He is limited/ constrained by the logic of the physical world he created - this is self-imposed

  supports Vardy's idea of God's self-imposed limitation
• Problems with the idea of God's omnipotence may be an issue of religious language 


  Macquarrie - supports Aquinas

  • believers need to remember that we use analogy when we speak of the power of God
  • our use of the word power is in this world so cannot be applied literally because God is infinitely greater than us
  • the kinds of power we know are fallible and our imagination is limited so it makes sense that we may struggle to understand God's power